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Life in Edwardian England We enjoy dramas about upstairs, downstairs life, but real Edwardian England saw a pampered few exploiting the poor majority. Coal miners, tin miners and steel workers were lucky to live beyond the age of thirty five. Life expectancy of the working class was a lot different to what it is today, and there was no such thing as the NHS, all hospitalts relied on donations. The class system was deplorable: The reality of Edwardian times is glossed over in historical fantasies such as Downton. The typical lifespan for a baker was 40, because of the long hours and ghastly working conditions. Bakers worked 18hrs a day, so that the idle rich could eat fresh bread rolls; not only at late dinners, but also at breakfast. The heat from the ill-regulated ovens was very unpleasant. These bakers were forced to destroy their lives because the rich shared the view of Hugh Bonneville, alias Lord Grantham, that there was something innocent and even natural about one group of human beings exploiting another group. Did domestic servants had it easy? No they didn’t… A badly-paid servant in a middle-class household might — just might — have had an employer with whom they enjoyed a cordial friendship, and maybe they had a life which they would have preferred to that of a miner. But even in friendly middle-class households, the servants were expected to do everything for the family, and this was before the days of vacuum cleaners or central heating or labour-saving kitchen devices. Up long before dawn, servants were brushing down the stairs with a dustpan and brush, cleaning out the clinker from innumerable grates, preparing trays, washing, scrubbing, scouring, polishing — usually with cleaning materials which required a lot of elbow-grease or, worse, were full of toxic chemicals like rat poison. Meanwhile, most middle-class people of the era took it all this for granted. Imagine Thomas Carlyle, a working-class man who had risen to become a prophet, sage and one of our greatest political and philosophical journalist. He was not allowed to smoke in the drawing room of his house by his wife, so he sat in the kitchen smoking until the small hours of the morning. Only when he had left, leaving the kitchen full of with smoke, could his two parlour maids tidy up after him, and creep into the kitchen cupboards which served as their beds! If some middle-class people were uncaring about servants, this was nothing compared with the truly monstrous selfishness of the upper class. One story passed on by a very old, very upper-class lady told of how, even in the grandest houses, the servants stank. In the big country houses, or the great mansions lived in London by the aristocracy, the servants were gathered in shared bedrooms and beds with no bathroom or toilet facilities. They didn’t often get clean uniforms or clothing, White gloves were worn to serve at table because they weren’t given the chance to have clean hands. Makes you think, doesn’t it. Regarded as a sub-species. Servants had little or no freedom, they scarcely had time to visit their families It became commen thought that one woman, born to wealth, shouldn’t have to cook, wash her clothes, look after her own children, or undertake any of the tasks which most of us nowadays take for granted; and another woman, because she was born poor, should be forced to do all these things for her mistress.